FREEDOM by Chrystal Evans

[Note: Chrystal Evans is an 11th grader at Centennial High School. One week in early November, 1997, during my facilitation of "A Poetic Odyssey with Romare Bearden," I happened across a draft of the illuminating essay you are about to read. The essay sat by one of the 40-odd computers in Mr. Dixon's lab, a place which has been key to the process of creating the web pages these documents belong to. Not only is the Centennial High School computer lab well-geared and lovingly run, Mr. Dixon's lab is the place I met many interesting students, Jason and Chrystal to name just two. Chrystal wrote the following paper for her fourth period English teacher, Mr. Walker, and it is a great pleasure to publish it. -- Merilene M. Murphy, Poet]

Freedom to me is a very important and respectable word that we should all understand. To me it means to be able to speak freely about our thoughts, say no when we don't want to do something, to be able to go anywhere without having trouble, and doing whatever we want but knowing right from wrong.

Freedom is not only a privilege but also a right, considering that many years ago there was slavery.

What I believe is that we are not free, laws, money and the government chain us, we can't go any where without some kind of inconvenience.

Fortunately we are able to speak our minds, even if we don't always get our point a cross.

Everyday more of us as humans are enslaved by drugs and gangs, we have been brainwashed, disrespected and taken advantage of, we have been taken into the system while we are only hurting ourselves. It seems as if slavery is never going to end only repeat itself in many different ways. Many people see slavery as something racist, something that happened or happens to black people, obviously it's something that happens to all of us. We have all been taken in by a dominating influence at least once. We have been unable to see that most of us are slaves with an unknowing participant.

People have not been freed from hurts of the past, too many are stuck on something that happened years ago. Freedom is something we should be entitled to, disregarding those who don't deserve it. We were not created to suffer, and without freedom there is suffering. Time is slowly drifting away just as many lives, we need to overcome our fear of change and free ourselves from grudges, hatred and ignorance. Most of us have been convinced that this is the way to be and settle for whatever is given to us, if we do convince ourselves then we may as well not talk about the subject of freedom or slavery. No one really knows how to communicate other than violently or creating an argument. Slavery is not something we can run or hide from, only learn from.

Hopefully one day in time we can all enjoy freedom like we are supposed too.